Sermon for 4th Lent
By Sam LaDue -
A professor of mine, Rev. Dr. Donna Allen, asked us to do an exercise in class a few weeks ago. The class is titled Ministry Across Cultures. It’s about a 3 hour lecture each Thursday night, from 5-8 pm.
We spent the first two hours talking about Matthew Shepherd and Emmett Till. We were talking about the ways, whether we like it or not, this world defiles human bodies and human minds.
Towards the end of class the professor asked us to pick a part of our body. To take a few moments to listen to our body, to hear what it has to say. She also asked us to see if we could let God speak to us through the part of our body that we had chosen. I’m sure this sounds a little bit bizarre and there is no question in my mind some of you are thinking “oh dear Lord, Berkeley has really gotten to Sam already”.
Don’t worry. I wont be asking you to hug trees, next time. But- maybe just come along with me for a little while, on this brief journey.
Can you connect to your body?
Just one body part will do. Focus there. Listen.
Can you hear God, speaking to you, through that body part?
What is the Holiest of Holies saying to you, through your own body?
The part speaking to me is my right hip.
Why?
I feel my weight shifting to my left foot, muscles begin to contract as I raise my right thigh to run. Because I want to run.
Why?
Because so much of the time I feel an invisible rope closing in around me. It wraps around my arms, it tightens, somehow it stops me. Somehow, it’s lying to me. It tells me I’m free. It tells me that this is love. And my hip starts to cramp as the energy that was meant to be released from that body part as I tore off in a sprint-- is forced to stand still.
Why?
God says to me, that whenever a serpent is biting, this is what it feels like. The only way to live, is to look at the serpent.
Some of you know that I was married once. One night was particularly rough. Police came to our apartment. I was standing there in my underwear and they handcuffed my ex-husband. I was so embarrassed. They asked me if I wanted them to take him away. And the thing is, you would never say yes in that circumstance, because you know that even if they took him away—he’s coming back.
So, I said no.
They asked me again.
And I said no.
They asked me one more time.
I said no.
After the police took the handcuffs off of him and left, the understanding in our home was that it was my fault this happened. I was so afraid, I was so bitten, I couldn’t look the serpent in the eye. I couldn’t acknowledge the serpent was there. I just knew that rope was tight, and I couldn’t move, and I was in pain.
Over time, after many equally painful nights and painful days, I finally had to look at the serpent. And the bizarre thing was, as painful as it was to look at the serpent and to have to begin to name all of the names that serpent had—ultimately, what I found on the other side was life. Somehow at the very darkest moment, light showed up. A small army of friends, family, a beautiful woman who had the sense to put her hand on my shoulder and ask me whether or not it I was ok, a therapist, coworkers, an amazing pastor—all traveled with me while I kept having to look at that Serpent. Name the serpent. And I lived.
Are you still connected to that body part?
What is it saying to you?
Sexism is another serpent a lot of us don’t like to look at. It doesn’t serve any of us. And, sexism doesn’t only go in one direction. It is Women’s History Month but the truth of the matter is plenty of men suffer abuse in this world and plenty of people who do not identify as male or female suffer the most abuse in this world. As a woman, who like many has endured much pain due to sexism, I am working to keep an eye on that serpent and not pass its painful bite on to others.
Racism is another serpent. Homophobia, another serpent. Colorism- another one. Intentionally ignoring or denying someone’s preferred gender identity- yet another serpent. There are so many serpents and we do not like looking at them. They are painful. We feel the burning, and stinging, and life-draining bites from them. And yet? We cry out about the bites. We lament over them with our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers—but when it comes time to simply look what is doing the biting so that we can have life?
We choose anguish.
Maybe it is because there are so many serpents that we are overwhelmed. It is so painful to take in the incredible damage that is being done to God’s creation every minute of every day. Ouch!
How’s that body part feeling?
Are you still connected?
My Advisor and Professor, Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda has taught me that it’s very important that, in the face of this overwhelming pain and frustration, we take on what she calls Critical-Mystical vision. There are three parts:
- See what is. And this is the most painful- because it means we must look at the serpent.
- Figure out what should or could be. This is where hope comes in. What is it that God is telling us through that body part? And honestly, we’re only going to hear it when we finally look at the serpent.
- Trust that the power of God in this cosmos is at work in, around, and through us. Even though it seems like the powers of evil and darkness are going to win, they will not. They will give way to light and goodness, and life—and neighbor love.
It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Having to look and endure this intense pain having to acknowledge and endure the truth of the world around us. We don’t even get to hope until we step into really painful truths. And yet, what could or should be brings hope, only after we look at what is.
Israelites, thousands of years ago, dying from serpent bites and being asked to look at the serpent in order to be healed. What a paradox.
There’s a Greek verb, pardidomi. It has two meanings, it can be translated as tradition or passing on. However, it also can be translated as betray, or to hand over. Another paradox.
You find pardidomi in use when you read about how God passed the Only Begotten, Child of Humankind on to us as a human. You find it again when you read about how, in the care of the world, the Only Begotten was bloodied, bruised, beaten—betrayed. By the very world that God, Lover and Creator, made.
How’s that body part?
Are you still connected?
Have you checked in, recently?
What is God, saying to you, through your body?
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Child of Humankind be lifted up so that whoever believes in that Child might have eternal life.”
I don’t know how it is that a world full of people humiliating, crucifying, defiling other people is also a world so beloved by God that we are given God’s Only Begotten that we might live. But I do know, that part of the exchange asks us, just like the Israelites, to look at that serpent. To think on what could or should be, to use our bodies to help make that hope happen. And to trust that God’s infinite, impossibly paradoxical love, is surrounding every one of us, swirling around us, helping us every step of the way…because after all,
God so loved the world, that God gave us God’s Only Begotten
that we, and all of God’s creation, might live.
Amen.
Sam LaDue
Candidate for rostered ministry with
the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
Sermon for:
March 14, 2021
